| Mbembe | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Nigeria |
Native speakers | (100,000 cited 1982)[1] |
Niger–Congo?
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mfn – inclusive codeIndividual code: oda – Odut village |
| Glottolog | cros1244 |
| ELP | Odut |
Mbembe is a Cross River language of Nigeria. Odut,[2] a divergent variety spoken in a village far South of the rest of Mbembe, had 20 speakers in 1980 and may be extinct.[3]
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labio- velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | plain | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| fortis | mː | nː | |||||
| Plosive/ Affricate |
voiceless | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | k͡p | |
| voiced | b | d | d͡ʒ | ɡ | ɡ͡b | ||
| fortis | tː | kː | k͡pː | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | ɸ | f | s | |||
| voiced | β | v | |||||
| fortis | fː | sː | |||||
| Tap | ɾ | ||||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | (ɨ) | u |
| Near-high | (ɪ) | (ʊ) | |
| High-mid | e eː | o oː | |
| Low-mid | ɛ | ɔ ɔː | |
| Low | a aː |
| Phoneme/Sound | Allophones | Occurrence |
|---|---|---|
| /i/ [i] | [ɨ] | in closed syllables except when following /j/ or palatalized consonants |
| [ɪ] | in closed syllables when following /j/ or palatalized consonants | |
| [i] | elsewhere | |
| /u/ [u] | [u̟] | in closed syllables except when following /w/ or labialized consonants |
| [ʊ] | in extended syllable-pieces except when following /w/ or labialized consonants | |
| [u] | elsewhere |
References
- ↑ Mbembe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Odut village at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) - ↑ Blench (2013) An Atlas of Nigerian Languages
- ↑ "Odut". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2017-07-26.
- ↑ Barnwell, Katherine Grace Lowry (1969). A Grammatical Description of Mbembe (Adun Dialect)- A cross river language. University College London.
